Cocoa and Chocolate | Page 6

accompaniment of news, story, and discussion. In the sixteen-sixties
there were no strident newspapers to destroy one's equanimity, and the
gossip of the day began to be circulated and discussed over cups of tea,
coffee, or chocolate. The humorists, ever stirred by novelty, tilted, pen

in hand, at these new drinks: thus one rhymster described coffee as
"Syrrop of soot or essence of old shoes."
The first coffee-house in London was started in St. Michael's Alley,
Cornhill, in 1652 (when coffee was seven shillings a pound); the first
tea-house was opened in Exchange Alley in 1657 (when tea was five
sovereigns a pound), and in the same year (with chocolate about ten to
fifteen shillings per pound) a Frenchman opened the first
chocolate-house in Queen's Head Alley, Bishopsgate Street. The rising
popularity of chocolate led to the starting of more of these chocolate
houses, at which one could sit and sip chocolate, or purchase the
commodity for preparation at home. Pepys' entry in his diary for 24th
November, 1664, contains: "To a coffee house to drink jocolatte, very
good." It is an artless entry, and yet one can almost hear him smacking
his lips. Silbermann says that "After the Restoration there were shops in
London for the sale of chocolate at ten shillings or fifteen shillings per
pound. Ozinda's chocolate house was full of aristocratic consumers.
Comedies, satirical essays, memoirs and private letters of that age
frequently mention it. The habit of using chocolate was deemed a token
of elegant and fashionable taste, and while the charms of this beverage
in the reigns of Queen Anne and George I. were so highly esteemed by
courtiers, by lords and ladies and fine gentlemen in the polite world, the
learned physicians extolled its medicinal virtues." From the coffee
house and its more aristocratic relative the chocolate house, there
developed a new feature in English social life--the Club. As the years
passed the Chocolate House remained a rendezvous, but the character
of its habitués changed from time to time. Thus one, famous in the days
of Queen Anne, and well known by its sign of the "Cocoa Tree," was at
first the headquarters of the Jacobite party, and the resort of Tories of
the strictest school. It became later a noted gambling house ("The
gamesters shook their elbows in White's and the chocolate houses
round Covent Garden," National Review, 1878), and ultimately
developed into a literary club, including amongst its members Gibbon,
the historian, and Byron, the poet.

Tax on Cacao.
The growing consumption of chocolate did not escape the all-seeing
eye of the Chancellors of England. As early as 1660 we find amongst
various custom and excise duties granted to Charles II:
"For every gallon of chocolate, sherbet, and tea made and sold, to be
paid by the maker thereof ..... 8d."
Later the raw material was also made a source of revenue. In The
Humble Memorial of Joseph Fry, of Bristol, Maker of Chocolate,
which was addressed to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury in
1776 (Messrs. Fry and Sons are the oldest English firm of chocolate
makers, having been founded in 1728), we read that "Chocolate ... pays
two shillings and threepence per pound excise, besides about ten
shillings per hundredweight on the Cocoa Nuts from which it is made."
In 1784 a preferential customs rate was proposed in favour of our
Colonies. This they enjoyed for many years before 1853, when the
uniform rate, until recently in force, was introduced. This restrictive
tariff on foreign growths rose in 1803 to 5s. 10d. per pound, against 1s.
10d. on cacao grown in British possessions. From this date it gradually
diminished. High duties hampered for many years the sale of cocoa, tea
and coffee, but in recent times these duties have been brought down to
more reasonable figures. For many years before 1915 the import duty
was 1d. per pound on the raw cacao beans, 1d. per pound on cacao
butter, and 2s. a hundredweight (less than a farthing a pound) on cacao
shells or husks. In the Budget of September, 1915, the above duties
were increased by fifty per cent. A further and greater increase was
made in the Budget of April, 1916, when cacao was made to pay a
higher tax in Britain than in any other country in the world. In 1919
Imperial preference was introduced after a break of over sixty years,
the duty on cocoa from foreign countries being 3/4d. a pound more
than that from British Possessions.
Duty on Cacao.
1855-1915. 1915. 1916. 1919. Cacao beans per lb. 1d. 1-1/2d. 6d.

4-1/2d. foreign, 3-3/4d. British Cacao butter per lb. 1d. 1-1/2d. 6d.
4-1/2d. foreign, 3-3/4d. British Cacao shells per cwt. 2s. 3s. 12s. 6s.
foreign, 5s. British
In considering this duty and its effect on the price of